CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
Patriotism and dissent
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`Zinn takes account of all the betrayals by the U.S. government which had no qualms in throwing to the wind mankind's hope for peace.'
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IN his famous book, A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn, the intellectual rock star of "democratic socialism", draws attention "to the eloquent, often uncompromising, voices of resistance that have mostly been shut out of the orthodox histories, the major media, the standard textbooks, the controlled culture." As Zinn observes, "It is vital that such voices are more widely read, and contribute to our understanding of history as seen by — and made by — ordinary people. The result of having our history dominated by presidents and generals and other `important' people is to create a passive citizenry, not knowing its own powers, always waiting for some saviour — God or the next president — to bring peace and justice. History, looked at under the surface, in the streets and on the farms, in GI barracks and trailer camps, in factories and offices, tells a different story. Whenever injustices have been remedied, wars halted, women and blacks and Native Americans given their due, it has been because `unimportant' people spoke up, organized, protested, and brought democracy alive."
Worldwide opposition
If one were to take a brief look at the recent demonstrations against the war in Afghanistan or Iraq, one could appreciate the sense of worldwide resistance. Zinn has spoken against the war in Iraq and has spent a lifetime opposing it. Thousands who have suffered have brought him deep distress, infuriating him to stand up against "all brute powers that destroy life and break the spirit of man". Soldiers have been dispatched half way around the world into the heart of another nation to fight a decidedly avoidable war. Zinn angrily asks: "Is this not the ultimate betrayal of our young by our government? Their families very often understand this before their sons and daughters do, and remonstrate with them before they go off." The Iraqi people too have been betrayed. Promised freedom from tyranny, they have experienced desolation and hunger caused by two wars and twelve years of misery owing to the sanctions. Pentagon's operation of "shock and awe", has left thousands dead and wounded. This is rule by force.
Betrayal of the young
Zinn takes account of all the betrayals by the U.S. government which had no qualms in throwing to the wind mankind's hope for peace: "The people of the United States have been betrayed, because with the Cold War over and `the threat of communism' no longer able to justify the stealing of trillions of the public's tax dollars for the military budget, that theft of the national wealth continues. It continues at the expense of the sick, the children, the elderly, the homeless, the unemployed, wiping out the expectations after the fall of the Soviet Union that there would be a `peace dividend' to bring prosperity to all. And yes, we come back to the ultimate betrayal, the betrayal of the young, sent to war with grandiose promises and lying words about freedom and democracy, about duty and patriotism. We are not historically literate enough to remember that these promises, those lies, started far back in the country's past."
Howard Zinn's two recent books, Artists in Times of War and Rule by Force are a scathing attack on the justification of war. Taking up the case of the artists, Zinn draws attention to the activism of Mark Twain who stepped outside the role of a novelist and condemned President Roosevelt for the war and the butchery in the Philippines. For Twain, the criticism of the temporary institutions that govern the public is not unpatriotic, but the "substantial thing, the eternal thing." Thus "to criticize the government is the highest act of patriotism." The United States' government, according to him, has browbeaten its own people as well as people of the world, a fact largely kept out of the histories taught at the school level. War, which has always accompanied economic exploitation, needs to be rejected at all costs. Zinn feels that the role of artists, activists and publishers is vital to the resistance movements aimed towards peace and protection of human rights as well as "a significant corrective to the triumphalism" of American military power.
At the outset in his book Rule by Force Zinn makes a case against the professionals who belittle anyone who dares to comment on an important question concerning the nation. If Peter Ustinov criticises the Vietnam War, his opinion is disregarded because "he is just an actor". Zinn asserts: "All of us, no matter what we do, have the right to make moral decisions about the world. We must be undeterred by the cries of the people who say, `You don't know. You are not an expert. These people up there they know'." The White House or the Congress is not the only agency that has the right to make the decisions and that "knows"; the involvement of citizens is crucial to the running of the country. "When the government becomes destructive . . . then it is patriotic to dissent and to criticise".
Zinn takes up the role of the artist who has to struggle long and hard against war and militarism. E.E. Cummings, John Dos Passos, Ford Madox Ford, Ernest Hemingway, all reacted strongly against the millions killed in World War I. There are enough indications in works of Euripides in the Greek period, Goya and Picasso in modern times of their sensitivity to war. Zinn does not agree with Arthur Miller who is of the opinion that "when the guns boom, the arts die". "Masters of War", a moving song by Bob Dylan, emphasises the impetus behind creativity during times of war; his anger at the guns and huge bombs is vividly put across in this poem:
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.
This virtually echoes the words of the protagonist in Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, probably the best book ever to be written against war. A torso with no legs, no arms, no face, blind, deaf, unable to speak, but the heart still beating, is found on the battlefield. His brain is still functioning and he can see through the hypocrisy of politicians who sent him to war. And now he wants to be seen so that all can visualise "war in its ultimate horror". Using the Morse code by shaking his head, he conveys to the public his anger: `Take me wherever there are parliaments and diets and congresses and chambers of statesmen. I want to be there when they talk about honour and justice and making the world safe for democracy... . And before they give order for all the little guys to start killing each other let the main guy rap his gavel on my glass case and point down at me and say here gentlemen is the only issue before this house and that is are you for this thing here or are you against it." I had read this book in school, and when Zinn refers to this text in his book, Rule by Force, I remembered how I too had been horrified by the novel and the ugliness of war. Interestingly, Zinn refers to another hard-hitting play "La Guerre de Troi n'aura pas lieu" ("The Trojan War Will Not Take Place") by Jean Giradoux, who has reworked the story of the Trojan war using Hecuba, an old woman, and Demokos, a Trojan soldier, to show how the horrors of war are camouflaged by some eye-catching causes like the recapture of Helen:
Demokos: Tell us before you go, Hecuba, what it is you think war looks like.
Hecuba: Like the bottom of a baboon. When the baboon is up in a tree, with its hind end facing us, there is the face of war exactly; scarlet, scaly, glazed, framed in a clotted filthy wig.
Demokos: So war has two faces: this you describe, and Helen's.
No war is justified
Such then, no war can be rightly justified. War is "terrorism magnified hundred times". Howard Zinn finally sends out a clear admonishment of his country's rulers: "Men who have no respect for human life or for freedom or justice have taken over this beautiful country of ours. It will be up to the American people to take it back." The American people have to resist any call for war, "whatever the reason conjured up by the politicians or the media." From 35,000 feet it is difficult to imagine the pain and atrocities caused on the ground by modern warfare.<243>
Violence just doesn't work.
Rule by Force, Howard Zinn, Natraj Publishers, Dehradun, 2004, p.214, Rs.250.
Artists in Times of War, Howard Zinn, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2003, p.112, £6.99.
SHELLEY WALIA
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